Sidney Sime – Victorian master of fantasy art

Sidney Sime (1867-1941) was a Mancunian, late-Victorian artist who rose to prominence in 1904, when he was approached by canonical fantasy author Lord Dunsany, a writer best known for The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), who asked him to illustrate his very first novel. The rest is history. Below is a selection of Sime’s work.

The city of neverthe ultimate godhe felt as a morsel‘IT’ (I have a friend who is an H. P. Lovecraft scholar and I showed him this image as I thought it seemed similar to Lovecraft’s infamous Cthulhu. This image was drawn in 1911, whilst ‘Call of Cthulhu’ was published in 1928 and my friend informed me that Lovecraft was enormously influenced by Lord Dunsany, whose work was illustrated by Sime. It seems very plausible then that this image could be the primary visual influence for the infamous Cthulhu!raimer cramthe bride of the man horsethe fortressthe gate of yannthe lean, high house of the knolesthe ominous coughthe silence of gedwe would gallop through africabookwonder gibbelinstom-o-the-roadsa map of the land of dreamstrees and impscover art for Lord Dunsany’s ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’.